Community-owned grocery is the hub of a small town

RED BAY — Rumor has it that a stranger walked into the Red Bay Grocery one day, looked around and asked no one in particular, “Who owns this place?”

Her curiosity turned to confusion when about a dozen hands shot up.

Had all 54 owners been present, the visitor would have been even more surprised, because no one who holds a piece of this little jewel is embarrassed to let people know.

According to Katie Barrineau, the store’s manager and a stockholder, 54 is the number of Red Bay’s 100 or so residents who have a stake in the grocery.

The Red Bay Grocery is actually far more than a grocery. For one thing, it’s Red Bay’s only retail outlet.

It’s also a restaurant, where breakfast, lunch and Friday night dinners are served.

However, the grocery’s most important function is as a gathering place.

“It’s just a place to come, sit on the porch, get a cup of coffee and wait for somebody to come by to talk,” said grocery co-owner Wayne Miller.

“Some people come over three and four times a day,” added Charles Morgan, another co-owner.

We’re talking small, here

The unincorporated community of Red Bay lies on the eastern border of Walton County between DeFuniak Springs to the north and Freeport to the south. It is bisected by State Road 81, not busy U.S. Highway 331.

Its original settlers were Scottish, locals say, and they mingled with an already established American Indian population. Miller said there are graves in an old cemetery in town that date back to the 1700s.

Red Bay could best be described as a farming community. Its residents do a lot of hunting and fishing along the Choctawhatchee River. The big event is an annual Thanksgiving Day festival.

It is a community so close-knit that residents share its churches.

There are three of them in Red Bay. The Presbyterian and Methodist churches sit side by side. The Baptist church is across the street.

There aren’t enough people to fill the churches, so two of them are locked on Sunday so everyone can gather in one place.

A creative business plan

Folks that interested in praying together can surely share ownership of a small business. Right?

They’ve done pretty well since the business’ opening Feb. 20.

“Everyone that comes in is in a good mood,” said Barrineau, the store’s manager.

Morgan, better known as the owner of Harbor Docks restaurant in Destin, is the person most responsible for the community ownership plan that launched the Red Bay Grocery.

The building was constructed, near as anybody can tell, sometime around 1936.

It served as a store for most of its life. However, in recent years it had been vacant more than it was occupied and become an eyesore, said Ouida Rigdon-Miller, the grocery’s next-door neighbor and, of course, a co-owner.

“Nobody kept it much over a year,” Rigdon-Miller said.

The plan to create the Red Bay Grocery was hatched at Rigdon-Miller’s supper table, a place where sumptuous country meals are served daily.

Once conceived, Morgan’s plan was to be discussed at a community center meeting. Notice may have been posted somewhere, but that step was hardly necessary.

“After about 30 minutes everybody found out exactly what it was all about,” Morgan said.

The plan called for investors willing to throw in $1,000 for a share of stock. For that, they were guaranteed a 10 percent discount on items sold.

“I said, ‘This time, why don’t we all try to do it together,’ ” Morgan said.

He called on his neighbors to chip in to grow vegetables for sale — a big shipment of locally grown pumpkins arrived Thursday. Rigdon-Miller, the culinary genius, would provide cakes and pies for sale.

“We’ll pay you for them,” Morgan told the community center crowd. “So you’ll be making money.”

He said he figured maybe six to eight would take him up on his offer. By the end, he actually had to insist that only he, who has 51 percent of the store stock, and Barrineau, his manager, held more than one share of stock.

Barrineau has two shares.

“If we didn’t own the majority of the stock we’d have to listen to them,” Barrineau whispered conspiratorially, smiling and rolling her eyes toward a couple of her opinionated co-owners who had gathered to enjoy the fall-like weather.

Morgan told his neighbors that they could try his business plan for a year. If they didn’t like it, they were welcome to try something else.

About halfway through its probation period, the strategy seems to be holding up.

“When Charles presented it, I thought it was a good idea,” said owner Ramon McDonald whose home across the street from the store gives him a bird’s-eye view of the going’s on there. “And I still think it’s a good idea.”

Arthur Gomillion, son of building owner Ed Gomillion and another stockholder, said he’s taking a wait-and-see approach to this community-owned grocery thing.

But he’s only kidding.

“Now that I’m a big time stock owner, we’ll find out after the first of the year if I can buy me a Rolls Royce,” he said.

A sense of discovery

Barbecue prepared by James Atkins, who Morgan brought up from Destin, is the primary lunch fare. But there appears to be no shortage of quality fresh food served in the restaurant.

Grocery store shelves, stocked and maintained by Barrineau, hold everything from cereal to deer corn and cold beer to crickets for fishing.

Atkins said the chief means of advertising for the Red Bay Grocery has always been word of mouth.

“It’s working,” said Atkins. “Once people step in here they come back and bring people with them. Tourists stop on the way down to the beach and then again on the way back.”

Morgan said a big advertising campaign might work to bring customers to Red Bay, but that would also spoil the fun in finding the place.

“You could put out billboards and neon signs,” he said. “But then people would lose their sense of discovery.”

Like it or not, the Red Bay Grocery —and Red Bay itself — has been discovered. A film crew arrived late Thursday to begin work on a documentary on the region, its people and a community-owned store.

Morgan is convinced the crew will find a cast of characters and a town with a pretty good business sense.

“This is not a hippy commune thing, this is a business and we’re going to make money at it,” Morgan said. “This is what you’re supposed to be doing in this country at this time.

“We’re taking our economic destiny into our own hands.”